


london calling

by palisadespalisades



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Coming of Age, Gen, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Internalized Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-23
Updated: 2017-11-23
Packaged: 2019-02-06 02:44:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12807927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palisadespalisades/pseuds/palisadespalisades
Summary: prompt: the moment eddie realizes that he’s gayShe said, “When you’re gay, the first person who knows is everyone else. Then, it’s you, then it’s your parents.” That, or something to that effect — all Eddie knows is that all of his friends laugh uproariously, and his heart drops to his knees, because all he can think about is home.





	london calling

**Author's Note:**

> a little one-shot drabble i posted on tumblr. thoughts on growing up gay, on growing up gay when you're forcibly outed before you even know what it means, and how it's just as scary and alienating as being in the closet.
> 
> always taking prompts and requests @homokaspbrak!

When Eddie’s 20, when he gets the hell out of dodge and goes to college, far,  _far_  away from his mother and his friends and everything he’s ever known, when he’s not  _Eddie-Spaghetti_  or _Eddie the sissy-queer_  (or only that when he wants to be), he hears this joke.

It’s pushing midnight, he’s at a party where the room’s filled with smoke and he’s choking on a cigarette, too, even though he doesn’t really like them, his friend tells him a joke. She’s not a pretty girl. She has close-cropped hair and calloused fingers and a deep voice, and she doesn’t wear pretty-girl clothes, all workboots and flannels. Even so, she always has a girlfriend, and at least one other girl pursuing her because, outside of Derry, the rules are different, and in Eddie’s friend circle, now, girls like their boys to be girls and boys like their boys to be, well,  _boys_. She tells this joke, and it makes the smoke catch in his throat, throwing him into a coughing fit with tears in his eyes, driving him outside.

She said, “When you’re gay, the first person who knows is everyone else. Then, it’s you, then it’s your parents.” That, or something to that effect — all Eddie knows is that all of his friends laugh uproariously, and his heart drops to his knees, because all he can think about is home.

It’s true. Everyone laughs, because they know it’s true, and he doesn’t know how their throats don’t catch, too. Maybe they do. Maybe they’re thinking the same damn thing.

After all, Eddie’s always known he was different, but the only reason  _he_  knew was because everyone else made damn well sure he did. Because when Richie was  _four-eyes_  and Bill was  _buh-buh-buh-Billy_ , he was _flamer faggot_. Because, for as long as he can remember, other boys knew he was  _other_. His queerness must’ve rolled off him in waves, spoken in his soft features and small hands, in the inhaler in his fanny-pack and the pills his mother made him choke down.

Eddie was a sissy long before he was gay.

_Other boys_  must’ve known some secret language he never spoke, because his childhood was hands in the mud, pushed down on rainy days walking home from school,  _queerboy_  in his ears before the boys saying it knew what it meant.

He had this ex-boyfriend. A real  _masc_  kind of man, who played baseball and let his stubble grow, and didn’t like Eddie’s friends, because,  _“well, they’re queer, Eddie,”_  like he wasn’t lying in Eddie’s twin bed with him. They broke up, because he didn’t want to tell his parents, and Eddie didn’t understand, because he’d never had to tell anyone anything. There was a kind of strangeness between them that was only verbalized when he said the words  _“coming out”_  and it hung in the air, a foreign concept to Eddie, who was outed before he ever wanted to kiss a boy.

For the record, Eddie was eleven, the first time he wanted to kiss a boy. He was sitting in Big Bill’s backyard, and he didn’t understand why he was staring so hard at Bill’s face, when he’d seen it a million times before, and it was, more or less, unimpressive each time before that. He supposed that it had something to do with Bill sticking up for him earlier that afternoon, as they were leaving the schoolyard and a gang of older boys had taken hold of Eddie’s backpack, throwing him a foot with  _“Flamer!”_  chasing him as he flew. “Hey! L-leave him alone!” Bill was a hero. “He’s not a f-f-flamer!” Wasn’t he, though? He didn’t know who Bill was to assert that with such certainty when Eddie couldn’t draw up the words to defend himself, but he knew — flamer was a bad thing, and Bill? Bill was insisting that he was still good.

Eddie just wanted to hold his hand, press his lips against Bill’s, not unlike what he did to his mother’s cheek. A  _thank you_. Innocent.

He knew it was wrong. He knew he couldn’t. He weaved his fingers into the grass, instead, and pressed his lips against the over-bandaged cut later that night, after he cut his (delicate, sissy-boy, fairy) hand on the freshly-cut blades.

He realized he was gay when he was fourteen, and a fist hit his stomach, ( _“queerfaggothomo”_ ), because he made the terrible mistake of not waiting to change in the locker rooms. He caught a glimpse of another boy removing his shirt, and had the impulse to count every rib, eyes trailing down narrow hips, lingering far,  _far_  too long. It was the most brutal beating he’d received yet, and he realized —  _oh_ ,  _this is the thing I’ve been doing wrong. This is what I’m not allowed to do._  And he swallowed it so deep that he thought it ruptured with every blow to the gut, and prayed it would never shine again. He wanted that part of him dead as much as the rest of the world did.

It did shine again, and it meant many teary nights, many sleepovers with friends he’d die for spent sitting across the room, a wedge pounded in with every prolonged silence, every secret not spoken. It meant running like hell from Derry, and hoping it would never chase him. It meant not trusting everyone he loved, and killing that sissy-boy child in him just to make it a  _few more years_. It meant a shoebox of clippings of the half-naked men in Men’s Health and pornos stolen from the depths of unsorted thrift store bins. It meant burning that box when he realized his mother had gone through his closet, and her eyes changed for  _worried_  to  _cold_.

Outside the party, he lets himself shed a few tears. A quiet mourning for each school dance he didn’t attend, for each date he didn’t go on and schoolyard romance stolen from him.

He goes back inside, to the friends he knows better than family. He grabs another beer (that he still doesn’t like the taste of, and probably never will), and lets the not-pretty-girl wrap an arm around his shoulder, smelling of cologne and some other girl’s lipstick, and he laughs at the rest of her jokes, because he knows she was thinking all that too.


End file.
